Foreign Office hijab giveaway was a crass and insulting stunt

Did you notice how April 1 came early this week? Someone put out a fake news report that the Foreign Office was giving away free headscarves to its female staff on World Hijab Day so they could enjoy the “liberation, respect and security” that comes with covering your hair.

Except it wasn’t fake news, it was true – and crass and insulting to just about everyone involved. What next… offering male employees yarmulkes?

These Foreign Office dunderheads are in charge of our dealings with the world, including Iran’s theocracy where hijabs are mandatory and a slew of courageous, bare-headed women are being arrested for protesting against this misogynistic tyranny.

In Britain, we are free to dress as we please, although I would assert the face veil should be outlawed in public places, as women in niqabs are no more acceptable than men in balaclavas. The right of others to see a person’s face overrides an individual’s right to conceal it in our culture. Moreover, it is unclear how much coercion is involved when a woman “chooses” to cover up.

The first thing the Taliban did when they ascended to power in Afghanistan was to oppress women by policing how they dressed. In areas captured by Isil, women’s “modest” dress was violently enforced. There is nothing benign about Saudi Arabia’s insistence that women don abayas in public; it is a brutal assertion of male authority disguised as pious gender segregation.

Here in Britain, many Muslim women choose to wear headscarves and that decision is theirs alone to make. Hijabs are supposed only to be worn after the age of 13, to signal puberty, but in a worrying fundamentalist shift, parents are giving them to girls much younger.

When one London head teacher recently tried to ban them among under-eights, she was inexcusably bullied into a U-turn. Tempers ran high because the hijab is a potent symbol of religiosity, not something to be tried on for fun. The sooner our witless Foreign Office grasps that, the more nuanced their international policies will be.